BOOK II.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plato and Jowett, Benjamin
ATHENIAN: The whole choral art is also in our view the whole of education; and of this art, rhythms and harmonies form the part which has to do with the voice.
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: The movement of the body has rhythm in common with the movement of the voice, but gesture is peculiar to it, whereas song is simply the movement of the voice.
CLEINIAS: Most true.
ATHENIAN: And the sound of the voice which reaches and educates the soul, we have ventured to term music.
CLEINIAS: We were right.
ATHENIAN: And the movement of the body, when regarded as an amusement, we termed dancing; but when extended and pursued with a view to the excellence of the body, this scientific training may be called gymnastic.
CLEINIAS: Exactly.
ATHENIAN: Music, which was one half of the choral art, may be said to have been completely discussed. Shall we proceed to the other half or not? What would you like?
CLEINIAS: My good friend, when you are talking with a Cretan and Lacedaemonian, and we have discussed music and not gymnastic, what answer are either of us likely to make to such an enquiry?
ATHENIAN: An answer is contained in your question; and I understand and accept what you say not only as an answer, but also as a command to proceed with gymnastic.
CLEINIAS: You quite understand me; do as you say.
ATHENIAN: I will; and there will not be any difficulty in speaking intelligibly to you about a subject with which both of you are far more familiar than with music.
CLEINIAS: There will not.
ATHENIAN: Is not the origin of gymnastics, too, to be sought in the tendency to rapid motion which exists in all animals; man, as we were saying, having attained the sense of rhythm, created and invented dancing; and melody arousing and awakening rhythm, both united formed the choral art?
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: And one part of this subject has been already discussed by us, and there still remains another to be discussed?
CLEINIAS: Exactly.
ATHENIAN: I have first a final word to add to my discourse about drink, if you will allow me to do so.
CLEINIAS: What more have you to say?
ATHENIAN: I should say that if a city seriously means to adopt the practice of drinking under due regulation and with a view to the enforcement of temperance, and in like manner, and on the same principle, will allow of other pleasures, designing to gain the victory over them—in this way all of them may be used. But if the State makes drinking an amusement only, and whoever likes may drink whenever he likes, and with whom he likes, and add to this any other indulgences, I shall never agree or allow that this city or this man should practise drinking. I would go further than the Cretans and Lacedaemonians, and am disposed rather to the law of the Carthaginians, that no one while he is on a campaign should be allowed to taste wine at all, but that he should drink water during all that time, and that in the city no slave, male or female, should ever drink wine; and that no magistrates should drink during their year of office, nor should pilots of vessels or judges while on duty taste wine at all, nor any one who is going to hold a consultation about any matter of importance; nor in the day-time at all, unless in consequence of exercise or as medicine; nor again at night, when any one, either man or woman, is minded to get children. There are numberless other cases also in which those who have good sense and good laws ought not to drink wine, so that if what I say is true, no city will need many vineyards.
Their husbandry and their way of life in general will follow an appointed order, and their cultivation of the vine will be the most limited and the least common of their employments. And this, Stranger, shall be the crown of my discourse about wine, if you agree.
CLEINIAS: Excellent: we agree.